Our View: Keep resolution to take care of yourself

Have you resolved this year to cut down on calories? Eat more vegetables?

Maybe you plan to start an exercise regimen, join a health club or move the laundry off that treadmill and climb back on it.

You might have resolved to butt out your last smoke, or do your last dip.

Making resolutions is the easy part. Keeping them can be another matter altogether.

But if you’ve made one that will make you a healthier person this year, do all you can to keep it.

It’s worth doing not only for you, but for others, as well.

There are demonstrated links between health and happiness; making positive lifestyle changes really can bring you a happier new year.

Of course, your friends and loved ones don’t want your health to deteriorate, either. Meanwhile, the health care landscape in America makes all of us dependent on each other to do what we can for our health’s sake.

The economic consequences of problems like obesity, which has become endemic in America, are tremendous. Medical care costs of obesity in 2008 totaled about $147 billion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.